The Conjuring Universe films — where is “The Crooked Man” spin-off?

The Conjuring Universe continues to thrive in 2019 with the release of The Curse of La Lloronaand Annabelle Comes Home.James Wan's The Conjuringwas released back in 2013 and since then we have witnessed sequels and spin-off's helmed by a variety of filmmakers. Of course, the quality of these efforts has also varied. The second film in the (now) firmly established horror franchise came courtesy of Annabelle; it centred on a creepy doll which was featured in the first film. Sadly, neither critics or audiences were particularly impressed with it, but its superior sequel - Annabelle: Creation - more than made up for the first film's failings.

Another spin-off - The Nun - was also released in 2018, which turned its focus to a frightening figure which appeared in Wan's direct sequel, The Conjuring 2. Similarly to Annabelle, the film failed to impress genre fans in the same way that the film which birthed the character did. Once it had come and gone, fans began to wonder when a film following the Crooked Man would arrive. This was also a character in The Conjuring 2 scheduled to appear in its own film, yet, there's still no sign of it. So, what's going on?

Considering that a sequel to The Nun is already in the works, we thought we'd have seen a glimpse of The Crooked Man by now. However, producer Peter Safran recently informed fans of the current situation in an interview with Comicbook.com: "There are a bunch of things that we’re exploring in [Annabelle Comes Home] that I just love, that I think are going to be great... When we did Conjuring 2, we all thought Crooked Man would be the next one out the gate," confesses Safran. "We just loved it... Instead, the audience was so fascinated by the nun.

It’s not that we won’t do Crooked Man," he says, confidently. "But, you kind of have to balance out [the franchise]. I’m sure that we have ideas of what we want to do beyond this from the artefact room, but I suspect that the audience will tell us exactly what we should be doing.”

The Annabelle Comes Home trailer teases the introduction of a wide range of entities from the Warren's artefact room. So, it's likely that audiences will react strongly to one of these new characters in particular and the studio will work to devote a spin-off to them. As Safran says, this happened with The Nun, and it was surely the same story with The Conjuring and Annabelle.

With spin-off's, sequels and of course, The Conjuring 3 all on the way, it is hard to envision a sustained demand for The Crooked Man. Unless he's reintroduced in the 2020 follow up to Wan's acclaimed sequel, the character will likely be swallowed into obscurity. Once Annabelle Comes Home is released, we'll surely be able to anticipate our next outing.